The year was 1992. Two women, one from Europe and the other from North America, landed in Asia for the first time.
Arriving in India, the first challenge we met was communication. Sr Rosaria knew only Italian and I knew some English. From the time Sr Rosaria had started her schooling in Italy, language had been her ‘bete noire.’ As if that weren’t enough, a medical condition had left her with hearing only in one ear. If you expected these two major ‘limitations’ to silence her, you couldn’t be more wrong!
At first, I became her ‘interpreter.’ I confess that, as time went, I started finding wearisome the task of being the mouthpiece of one of the most communicative and expressive persons I know. She too longed for autonomy.
Soon, Sr. Rosaria’s thirst for communication became stronger than her aversion for foreign languages or her difficulty in hearing.
What I remember most from our first years in India is her studying languages relentlessly, any time of the day, and sometimes of the night, even falling asleep with headphones and tube light on. She would even go to the English class conducted for our aspirants and ask a thousand questions: “How do you say this? What’s the meaning of this? Why should we say or write this way?” Fearlessly, too, she would make use of her broken English, more concerned about communicating and learning than about making mistakes.
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Sr Marie Gabrielle Riopel SCSM
